Abstract
THE untimely death on October 29, at the age of fifty-four, of William Speirs Bruce removes a leading oceanographer and the foremost British authority of his time on Polar regions. From the age of twenty-five Bruce had devoted practically his whole life to the exploration of Polar lands and seas, and had to his credit no less than twelve Arctic and two Antarctic expeditions. On the eve of completing his medical course at Edinburgh he sailed for the Antarctic in the Dundee whaler Balaena in 1892. The visit of this and other whalers was of course a commercial venture, and though Bruce was mainly occupied in assisting the crew in sealing, he found time to make many valuable observations in the north-western part of the Weddell Sea, the first scientific observations made in those regions for half a century. Returning home the following year, he became an assistant in the Challenger office, and later was in charge of the observatory on the summit of Ben Nevis until 1896, when at a few hours' notice he sailed in the Windward to Franz Josef Land with the Jackson-Harmsworth Polar expedition. For a year he assisted in the survey of the archipelago and made valuable collections, and he was present at the historic meeting with Dr. F. Nansen on his return from the Polar ocean. In 1898 Bruce sailed with Major A. Coats to Novaya Zemlya, Kolguev, and Hope Island, and later in the same summer with the Prince of Monaco to Spitsbergen. This was the first of many cruises with the Prince of Monaco, and laid the foundation of Bruce's wide and authoritative knowledge of Spitsbergen and its natural history.
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B., R. Dr. W. S. Bruce. Nature 108, 345–346 (1921). https://doi.org/10.1038/108345a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/108345a0